Why does text convert to picture message

this is absolutely the worst thing in g1, I used to have a (not good) n95, that allowed me to send very long messages by joining them into lots of sms messages. Here in brazil MMS messages are very very expensive (around $3 each), while SMS messages are usually free.
I came to this thread hoping to find a software fix, not a lot of ppl saying this problem cannot be solved.
gotta change it by myself?
 
MMS is for files that are over a certain size.

SMS turns to MMS, once that entire SMS text reaches a certain size.

If you are worried about MMS charges, Use the email feature on the phone, and send the email as a text to the other person's phone.



another thing that may happen to you, is if you get a MMS message from someone, and there is no picture. This may be due to that person's phone not supporting threaded texting. And in this case, when they just quick reply to a picture or MMS you send them, their reply is sent back as an MMS, and will kind of look funky inside your message window.


either way, a text message (text or pic) is a text. You either have unlimited, or 400. they both count as the same. Send a pic message, you now have 399 texts left.

No harm, no foul
 
The problem is the fact that, as you said, SMS turns into an MMS after you reach 3x SMS worth of text. This is best for MOST people, but not for everyone.

It is not true to say you either have 400 or unlimited. Every plan is different in every country. Here in the UK you can get plans that give anything from 0 free SMS messages to Unlimited, depending how much you pay and which network you go with. Some plans include MMS in the free messages, some don't.

As Arkilus said, for example, in Brazil MMS are not free and cost around $3, so sending any text over 480 (that's 3x 160) characters will suddenly increase the price by a factor of 10.

In the UK, the opposite is true. An SMS message costs around 10p, and an MMS around 30p, so if you send more than 3 SMS messages it is indeed cheaper to convert it to an MMS. In this case, Android works well.

On an Unlimited plan, however, it will NEVER be cheaper to send an SMS message, as you can send an unlimited amount of text for free as SMS, so converting to MMS is a bad idea.

Email, while a solution for some people, is not really a good solution. Not everyone you're sending to or replying to has access to email on their phone, or choose to use it on their phone.

The bottom line is people want to be able to manually set the number of SMS messages to allow before it converts to an MMS, and whether it converts at all. Some people want it never to convert, some people want it to convert after 2, 3, 5, 10 messages.
 
But you're speaking of how stuff works with your provider.

T-Mobile in the UK, for example, charge the customer for every "email" received via text. As an email takes up multiple text messages this can quickly add up.

Not all providers support receiving of emails via SMS.

Not all customers know their provider supports this.

Not all providers allow you send emails via SMS (I know mine doesn't).

Other phones either use SMS messages for SMS messages (no automatic changing to MMS), or require you to manually change to an MMS, or allow you to set the number of SMS messages to fill up before it automatically converts it.

Or, you can send an email using an MMS message, but this still costs more money for many people.

Android is at fault here. It forces you to use an MMS message as soon as you hit the 480 character limit and there's no way around that or any way to configure this limit.

I agree using email makes much more sense, but unfortunately not everyone can.
 
In one example, my text message turned into a picture message when I included a subject. Otherwise, the text message without a subject stayed a text message.
 
A text (SMS) message will turn into a picture (MMS) message at either 480 characters (the length of three SMS messages - for many people an MMS message becomes cheaper at this level), or when you try to do something with the message that is only supported by an MMS message. This includes adding a picture, or any other file attachment, or adding a subject (because SMS messages don't have subjects).
 
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